


Кума Лиса (Kuma Lisa)

by cassandrasfisher, RhiannonMcBride



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AUish, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Natasha is a Kuma Lisa, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Russia, Russian Fox Spirits (Kuma Lisa), Searching for Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-17 03:57:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18957391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassandrasfisher/pseuds/cassandrasfisher, https://archiveofourown.org/users/RhiannonMcBride/pseuds/RhiannonMcBride
Summary: While searching in Russia for Bucky, Steve meets up with Natasha and discovers she has a secret...





	Кума Лиса (Kuma Lisa)

**Author's Note:**

> This is my pinch-hit entry for the Captain America Reverse Big Bang, inspired by art by cassandrasfisher. This art was on my initial list, and consider myself lucky I was able to write a story for it (and use my Russian degree a little in the process).

                          

  

Steve Rogers was lost. He hated admitting it, but he could no longer deny it. It wasn't, after all, as if the serum had gifted him with an internal navigation system like that of migratory birds. He had a decent sense of direction, but nothing superhuman.

It wasn't like he'd get lost somewhere like Brooklyn or Manhattan. Or even in most cities that had at least a rudimentary grid pattern. He was good then. But drop him in the middle of nowhere, fields and streams and patches of woods that looked virtually alike -- then he was in trouble.

Like now. He knew he was roughly two hours’ drive beyond the outskirts of Moscow, but he knew little else. He'd been attempting to follow a scrawled set of directions -- scrawled in Russian, which he could barely decipher at the best of times -- to find an old Soviet scientist purported to know something about the Winter Soldier program.

Steve had been on Bucky's trail for months, and every time he thought he might be getting somewhere, he'd run into another dead end. The breakup of the Soviet Union, now nearly thirty years past, didn't help. The Winter Soldier program, super-secret to begin with, had been buried even deeper, records destroyed, operatives and scientists purged. Then HYDRA had taken what little was left, along with the last remaining Soldat. Bucky.

But Steve had always been a tenacious bastard, and he wasn't giving up, even if it meant wandering through a patch of Russian woodland until he found the man he was looking for.

He paused in a clearing, using the summer sunlight filtering through the trees to squint again at the near-useless directions that insisted he was still going the right way.

He wasn't alone. The awareness he was being watched prickled the back of his neck, soldier's instinct. He whipped around, but he saw nothing that should have awakened his senses. His eyes swept the clearing again, and a small flash of color drew his attention. Red. A rich, fiery auburn.

A fox, sitting in the shadows at the base of an oak, watching him with alert green-gold eyes. Eyes that seemed eerily familiar. The creature showed no fear, only keen interest.

It continued to watch him as it crossed the clearing toward the faint path he had been following. She, if the lack of visible balls below her bushy, upraised tail was anything to judge by. She paused at the edge of the clearing, gestured with a toss of her head which seemed to say "Follow me," and trotted slowly down the trail.

Steve shrugged, deciding he had nothing to lose, tucked the directions back in his pocket and followed.

The fox never looked back, never checked to see if he was still behind her, just kept trotting along.

Steve knew he'd been out in the cold too long if he was willing to follow a fox through a Russian forest.

After maybe half an hour, the path emptied out into a large clearing that contained a ramshackle house. The fox paused at the base of a wild berry bush, sat, shot him what seemed to be a satisfied smirk.

Steve approached the house cautiously, knocked on the battered wood of the door.

The former Soviet was _not_ pleased to see him.

Steve invited himself in and questioned the man in English and broken Russian. The scientist answered as best he could in a mixture if Russian and surprisingly decent English.

The key phrase Steve picked up was "В Сибире." In Siberia. The base was in Siberia, forty kilometers from a town whose name Steve could barely pronounce, let alone spell.

The scientist, clearly eager to be rid of Steve, scribbled the town's name on a blank scrap of paper, along with compass points and an arrow pointing the way toward the abandoned base. Not much, but more than he had had.

"Спасибо большое," he said. "Thank you."

The scientist just jerked a thumb toward the door. Go.

Steve left, trying not to grin. His first real lead on Bucky himself. Maybe this wasn't such a hopeless task.

The fox was still there, nibbling delicately at a berry. Odd. He'd thought they were carnivores. She looked up, met his gaze boldly.

"Спасибо," he said, feeling ridiculous for talking to the fox like it could understand him.

She nodded, as if she really did, then scampered to the far side of the clearing and a better-marked path. She looked over her shoulder expectantly.

A two-hour hike led him back to where he'd stashed a battered motorcycle. He shot the fox a look. "Is there any way you can help me get to Siberia?" He was almost serious. Almost.

The fox cocked her head, studying him with those vivid green eyes, then she nodded and hopped onto the back of the motorcycle.

He was definitely losing it. But at least he'd have company.

**~*~**

That night he found a room in an inn in a modest-sized town, the owner's silence paid for in American dollars. He smuggled the fox in; it seemed quite content to burrow into his leather jacket. Then he went in search of food.

When he returned to his room, paper sack of groceries in one arm, he knew instantly he wasn't alone, and the identity of his intruder came as an utter shock. "Nat."

"Best to call me Tasha here," she said, deliberately letting Russian color her speech. "Or Natalya Alyanovna if we're in a situation that requires formal address."

"How did you find me?" He knew finding people who didn't want to be found was part of her skill set, but even he hadn't known he would wind up here this night.

"You wouldn't believe me," she said.

"Try me."

"Magic," she said. "The countryside is full of it."

"You're right -- I don't believe it."

"You should," she said cryptically.

He thought of his mother and her Irish fairy tales, tales she'd sworn carried a bit of truth, tales that said there were still spirits and magic afoot in the wild parts of the world.

But his mother was eighty years gone now, her stories belonging to another age.

"I have a lead on Bucky," he said, changing the subject abruptly.

"I know," Natasha said. "Siberia."

"How--?"

Natasha offered an enigmatic smile, her green eyes sparking. "I have my ways."

He realized then the fox was gone, and he glanced about. "Did you see a fox in here?"

"She'll be back."

Steve hoped so. He was already getting attached to the little creature, even if it spooked him a bit. Countryside magic, indeed.

He and Natasha shared the food he'd bought, black bread and butter, cheese and cured meat, and a couple of sour apples. Natasha taught him a Russian ritual for welcoming guests, dipping a bit of bread in salt and eating it, and as they ate, they formulated a plan for when they reached Siberia.

Then they lay down on opposite sides of the lumpy mattress and went to sleep.

**~*~**

The next morning, Natasha was gone but the fox was back, watching him with those green, green eyes.

Natasha had green eyes.

Steve shook his head. Not possible. Just not possible. His teammate, his friend, secretly a were-fox? He really was losing it.

The fox smirked, just like Natasha.

"Coffee," Steve muttered. "I need coffee." He had to be imagining this. The fox couldn't be Natasha; Natasha, the fox.

He showered, not knowing when he'd next have the opportunity, then shared more food with the fox. She snuggled back into his leather jacket, and they hit the road.

He'd take a train through Siberia, knowing he could never smuggle the fox onto a plane. Besides, it would be easier to maintain a low profile travelling by rail. Natasha had told him where best to pick up the train. It wa most of a day's ride on the motorcycle, but that was okay. He was optimistic for the first time in months; he would find Bucky, no matter how long it took.

He stopped a few miles outside of the town where he would pick up the train, deciding to camp for the night rather than find a room. A stranger speaking bad Russian would attract attention, so better to show his face only as briefly as possible.

He wheeled the bike a little ways into a patch of woods. The fox wriggled out of his jacket and began sniffing about. Her tail swished slowly as she explored, then she slipped off into the trees.

He wasn't really surprised when Natasha joined him a few minutes later. She was clad in jeans and a pine-green sweater, looking far more at ease in these woods than he was. "Does anyone else know?" he asked her quietly.

"That I'm not entirely human? Just Fury, and he tries to forget. The directors of the Red Room knew; it's why they wanted me."

"What are you exactly?"

"They call us Kuma Lisa. We're fox spirits, guardians of the wilderness, protectors of travellers through our realms."

"Is that why you're here? Why you found me?"

"I wasn't looking for you," she said cautiously. "I was stunned when I realized you were in my territory."

"Your territory?"

"Yes."

"How do you hold a territory and still work with the Avengers?"

Her expression shifted, growing tense and pained. "Not nearly as well as I would like. The need to return here always pulls at me, but I can ignore it. I _have_ to come in the summer, though, at least for a few weeks. I need to recharge my batteries, as it were. I can only go so long without access to real wilderness. Central Park just doesn't cut it."

Steve chuckled. "I suppose it doesn't." He took a seat at the base of an oak and met her gaze. "Thank you."

She took a seat nearby in the grass and the leaf mold. "For what?"

"For trusting me. For revealing what you are. For helping me."

"You're my friend. Of course I'll help you, as best I can."

Steve nodded. She'd proved that before.

"But I do have a confession to make." Her voice was whisper-soft, the words dragged reluctantly from her lips.

Steve said nothing, just gave her space to find her words.

"I knew Bucky. Not by that name, of course. He was just Солдат. The Soldier." She closed her eyes, and Steve knew memory was unfurling before her closed lids. "In the Red Room. He was there to train us in weapons, to train us _as_ weapons, turn us into perfect little Soviet worker bees, ruthless, emotionless, deadly. Just like him. Except he wasn't. His programming was beginning to slip. He was kind to me, slipped me a candy one afternoon."

A tear formed at the corner of her eye, and she dashed it away. "But they must have seen. They took him for re-programming, and they made all of us watch, just for a few minutes, but it was enough. The message was clear -- do not feel, do not care, do not betray the cause."

Steve read something in the set of her jaw, her stiff posture, something he knew she wouldn't want to talk about, but he addressed it anyway. "You blame yourself."

She said nothing, not for a long time. "Of course I do," she finally admitted. "I betrayed him, even if I didn't mean to."

"No. You didn't," Steve said bluntly. "You kept his secret rather than reveal it."

"They still caught him because of me."

"Did they? Would they have left you unpunished?"

Her eyes widened.

"That's a child's reasoning, a child's guilt. Let it go, Natasha."

"Easy to say. Tough to do."

"I know." Steve locked eyes with her. "Just know you did nothing wrong. Nor did he."

"There's still a hell of a lot of blood on my hands."

"Blame the bastards who brainwashed you."

A shaky smile. "I'll try.”

They shared a meal in silence, more black bread and cheese and meat. Then Natasha excused herself and slipped off into the woods, presumably to take her fox form.

Man, his life was weird.

**~*~**

The train journey would take days, and that was just to get them within striking distance of their destination. But at least they were on their way.

Natasha wisely decided to travel openly in her human form rather than be smuggled aboard as a fox. Steve could tell she was chafing, uneasy, but they had no privacy to speak freely. She told him only not to worry, that it had nothing to do with their reason for being on the train, that it had to do with what she was. Cryptic, but enough to be reassuring.

The train ride was tedious, but the other passengers were mostly friendly and didn’t seem to mind Steve’s stumbling Russian. Their cover was that of a Muscovite woman and her new American husband, celebrating their six-month anniversary with a trip to Irkutsk for some sightseeing.

Good, as far as it went. Their real target was more than 500 km farther north by northeast, and reaching it would be a challenge, even in summer. But Steve had confidence that Natasha could get them there.

They spent several nights in Irkutsk, making preparations, gathering supplies. solidifying their covers by doing some actual sightseeing. Irkutsk was near the Mongolian border and boasted stunning architecture and relatively moderate temperatures.

“The Soviets exiled those who'd fallen out of favor here.” Natasha lectured as they shopped. “People important enough they couldn’t simply disappear, mostly. Many, many others were either just killed or wound up in the gulags.”

“Gulags. Those were Stalin, right?” Steve’s knowledge of Soviet history was sketchy, but he was pretty sure of this.

“Yes. Forced-labor camps, mostly in Siberia. Natasha looked disgusted.

“Not much better than the Nazis,” Steve muttered. “We really made a deal with the devil to defeat Hitler.” Still, could the Allies have won without the Soviets?

“Most of the human part of my family died in the siege of Leningrad,” Natasha continued quietly, her eyes bright and cold as emeralds, “and many of the rest fell victim to Stalin’s purges. Two madmen wiped out pretty much my entire family.”

Steve said nothing. What could he say? “Sorry” was wholly inadequate.

“Do you know anything of the siege of Leningrad?”

Steve shook his head. “Not really.”

“Two-and-a-half years. Best guess, more than a million people died, many from starvation. An adult’s daily ration of food was a two-inch cube of bread, and that was made with at least half sawdust to  
stretch the flour.”

Steve had never realized just how bad it had been.

“There’s a cemetery, Piskaryovskoye, where at least a half-million victims are buried -- no one knows the exact number. There are rows upon rows of mass graves as far as the eye can see, marked only with a year.”

“Will you take me there someday.” To pay his respects to people he hadn’t even realized he was fighting for.

She nodded. “Next summer. We’ll bring Bucky.”

He hoped they could, that this would be over by then.

They ate at a small café, then made their way back to the hotel. Tasha stopped to buy a bottle of cheap vodka. She had a phenomenal capacity for alcohol, in part, she said, because of her magical nature, but mostly because she was Russian. Steve had been startled the first time he’d seen one of these cheap bottles, as the neck was covered only with foil, no cap. Natasha had explained it was expected there would be no leftovers.

As a putative married couple, they were sharing a bed, and it wasn’t exactly like they hadn’t shared close quarters and sleeping arrangements on missions before, but somehow this time was different. Steve was painfully aware of Natasha as a woman, not just a teammate.

And if the heated look Natasha gave Steve as she emerged from the bathroom in nothing but a t-shirt and a scrap of lacy underwear was anything to judge by, Steve wasn’t alone in his feelings. He had stripped down to t-shirt and boxers, and Natasha gave him an appreciative once-over. “Damn, Rogers,” she said. “You need to register those guns as lethal weapons.”

Steve blushed to the roots of his hair.

“And you’re cute when you get flustered.”

“You’re more than cute,” Steve said, surprising himself a little. This was his teammate; they didn’t need to complicate their relationship.

His thoughts must have shown on his face, because Natasha laughed. “Ever the boy scout, Rogers.” She came closer, too close, and set her hands on his chest. ”We’re consenting adults.”

“Who have to work together.”

“Who are hopefully mature enough to not let whatever might happen between us affect our working relationship.” Her hands slid up to rest on his shoulders. “Who can have one night and let it be one night. Or have it be more, should we decide that’s what we want.”

Steve said nothing, considering.

“So what do you say, Rogers? What happens in Irkutsk--”

He smiled. “May or may not stay in Irkutsk.” His hands circled her waist -- God, she was tiny.

Her hands slid behind his neck, pulled him down for a kiss. Her lips were at once pliant and demanding, greedy and giving. She tasted of earth and salt and Russian ~~turpentine~~ vodka, smelled of woods and fresh berries, and best, she was warm and willing in his arms.

His hands slid town to cup her ass, not at all concealed by the scrap of silk she wore. She felt soft, utterly feminine, but utterly deadly. Worthy of her codename.

Her green eyes danced as he squeezed her cheeks, and she nipped at his lower lip in retaliation.

Game on. He lifted her up and tossed her onto the bed. She landed with a bounce, propped herself up on her elbows, and smirked at him. “That the best you’ve got?”

“Just getting warmed up.” He launched himself at the bed, landing with his knees straddling hers, his hands bracketing her shoulders. He could see her defensive instincts wanting to kick in, the instinct to fight, to kill, embedded deep within her, but she subdued them. Not that she didn’t attack, just that she made no lethal moves.

Within moments, their positions were reversed, he flat on his back, she over him, and he not quite sure how it had happened.

She straddled his hips, staying just clear of his cock, which was rising happily to the occasion. She grinned at him, hungry and amused both. “Don’t look so surprised. There’s a reason female foxes are called vixens.”

She shoved his t-shirt up, danced her fingertips across his chest and belly. Then she leant down and licked her way from just above his navel to the center of his chest.

“Damn it, Tasha.” Said without heat and with no small amount of desire.

She kissed his left nipple, feather-light, let her warm breath caress it.

Steve groaned low in his throat.

She drew the nub into her mouth, nibbled and sucked at it, sending a shiver of pleasure through him, arrowing straight to his cock.

Her fingers found his other nipple, teased it in counterpoint.

He groaned louder.

She explored his body slowly, thoroughly. Sweet torture. He both hoped and feared it would never end. He could feel the heat of her, so tantalizingly near his cock but never quite closing the gap.

She nipped, scratched, sucked, leaving marks they both knew would vanish long before morning. She played him like a fiddle, her lips and teeth and tongue and nails drawn across his flesh like a bow.

When he was sure he could stand no more, she paused, slipped her t-shirt off over her head, her movements slow and sensual, giving him a show. She tossed the garment aside, her high, firm breasts jiggling with the motion. Her nipples were dusky-pink, drawn up slightly.

She clambered off him to stand beside the bed, then tugged at the waistband of his boxers. “Разавайся,” she said. “Сейчас.”

“No need to curse at me in Russian,” he said with a grin, fairly sure the first word meant “strip,” surer still the second word was “now.” He planted his shoulders against the mattress, lifted his hips, shoved his boxers down to his knees. Then he sat up to remove them, shed his rucked-up t-shirt as well.

She slid the scrap of emerald silk that passed for underwear -- one of the cool things about this era -- off over her hips and stepped out of it. Her skin was tawny-fair, what his ma had called “peaches-and-cream,” with a smattering of darker-gold freckles. The thatch of hair between her legs was a deeper color than that on her head, a rich auburn.

“Так красивая,” he murmured, straining his limits of Russian. “So beautiful.”

Natasha smirked. “You’re not exactly chopped liver, Rogers.”

Steve’s blush extended well down his chest.

“What? You’re gorgeous, and you know it.”

He shook his head. “I don’t, not really.” He hadn’t planned for the mood to turn serious, but she’d touched a nerve. “You should have seen me when I was young. I was short and scrawny and spent half my life at death’s door. That left a mark, even if it doesn’t show. I still don’t feel quite entirely at home in this body."

“I never suspected.” Her voice was gentle. “I knew you hadn't always been like this, but I didn’t know you’d been that sick.”

“I don’t like to talk about it,” he admitted. “Besides, no one wants to know that sickly little Steve Rogers still exists somewhere inside Captain America.” He couldn’t quite suppress the edge of bitterness that crept into his voice.

“I want to know,” Natasha said, looking deep into his eyes. “I want you, not the public persona. I spent so many years as a spy that I forget sometimes who I really am. It’s left me with a real dislike of masks, of the polite façades we all wear. I want the real you.” Her words were as fierce as they were quiet.

“This is who I am now, for good or ill. This body, but shaped by who I was, how I was where I’m from, _when_ I’m from.”

“And that’s perfect” She sat on the bed beside him, slipped her arms around his neck, kissed him, tender and passionate. Then she pushed him onto his back, a softer version of her usual smirk on her lips. “Now let me love you. Just lie back--”

“And think of England,” Steve quipped, his inner smart aleck having decided The Moment was over.

“Rogers, if you’re thinking of England, I’m not doing it right.”

They both laughed, and Tasha’s eyes were still twinkling as she resumed her thorough exploration of Steve’s body, everywhere but where he most wanted her to go, damn it.

He wriggled as she pressed a kiss to the skin just below his navel, trying to move her lips a little lower.

She stilled him with a firm hand on his hip. “Patience, Rogers. Good things come to those who wait. Including a good come."

Steve groaned at her pun, groaned louder as she nipped and nuzzled her way from his other hip down his inner thigh almost to his knee. She worked her way down to his ankle, then back up the other leg. Then she breathed on his cock.

Breathed. On his cock.

He never would have believed how erotic that simple act could be, warm air caressing his aching flesh. She held there for an eternal minute, tantalizing him, testing him.

Then she kissed the head of his cock and took it into her mouth, enveloping it in wet heat. His fingers dug into the mattress, hard enough he feared he’d leave holes, and the muscles of his stomach clenched. “God, Tasha.”

She paused, raised her head long enough to say, “We’re spirits, Rogers, not gods.” Her eyes twinkled, and she descended on his cock again.

She knew how to tease, how to bring him to the brink and back away, leave him shaking and aching under her oral assault. She swirled her tongue around the head, grazed the shaft with her teeth, applied delicious pressure with her lips.

She brought him to the brink of madness, and he would gladly have flung himself off the precipice and crashed into insanity, But just when he was sure he could bear no more, she stopped.

He moaned. No, fuck it, he _whimpered_. She’d reduced him to a whimpering puddle of raw need and left him that way.

“Get up,” she commanded. “It’s your turn.”

The hunger had cross-wired his brain. “My what?”

“Your turn. Do with me what you will.” Those green eyes gleamed. “Of course I’m hoping that what you will is to fuck me senseless--”

He could do that. He forced the brain cells that controlled his body back to some semblance of function and flipped her onto her back, holding her wrists over her head with one hand, the other hand splayed over her belly.

“Masterful,” she said.

“Shut up,” he said with a grin.

“Make me.”

So he did. He bent down and nipped at one earlobe. And she arched under him. He licked and nibbled the curve of her ear, then down her throat while his hands cupped her breasts, his thumbs circling her nipples. She cursed softly in Russian.

He kissed own the length of her breastbone, blew a raspberry against her navel. She laughed, then looked at him with those fathomless green eyes and urged, “Now, Rogers.”

“Soon,” he promised. He kissed the auburn curls between her legs then slid his tongue into her welcoming folds.

She tasted sweet and earthy, a unique blend that could only be Natasha. She writhed under him, shuddering and gasping.

His erection had flagged a bit from inattention, and he stroked it, readying himself as her readied Tasha.

She grabbed his ears hard enough to hurt, though the jolt of pain only fuelled his desire. “Now,” she repeated, and she growled low in her throat, her vulpine nature showing itself.

“Now,” he agreed as he shifted position and lined his cock up. He entered her, swift and deep, and she let out a soft moan of satisfaction. Her legs wrapped around his hips, urging him still deeper.and he found a rhythm that worked for both of them, savage, almost violent, both of them propelled by needs too long denied.

She clawed at his shoulders, kissed him fiercely, spurred him onward with those emerald eyes, luminous and hungry, until she tumbled over the brink, her whole body convulsing with the force of her orgasm.

Steve wasn’t far behind. As her muscles tensed around him, he gave a soft cry and emptied himself into her.

After, spent and sticky and sated, they lay together on the bed, feeding each other berries they’d bought that afternoon and laughing.

“Are you ever going to let me see you transform?” he asked.

She tilted her head, considering, then nodded. Give me some room.”

He slid over on the bed, watched as her human form shimmered for a moment, was replaced by the fox, then shifted back.

“Can you transform partway?” he asked.”

“Yeah, if I want. Why?”

He grinned at her. “I was wondering what you’d look like with a tail.”

“You’re a perverted son of a bitch.” But she was trying not to laugh. “I suppose you’d want the ears, too.”

“Now that you mention it. And whiskers.” She rolled her eyes, but a moment later she had all of the above.

He moved close again and kissed her, discovering she’d also kept her vulpine teeth. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea.

Then she proved to him that it was a good idea. A very, very good idea.

Much, much later, as they again lay twined around each other, he remembered something. “Are you ever going to tell me what was bugging you there on the train?”

“It was nothing, or almost nothing. The Kuma Lisa whose territory we were travelling through didn’t want me there. Most of us get along pretty well, but this one was a sour old vixen.”

“What about where we’re going? Will you have trouble being so far afield?”

“No.” Was her answer a little too fast. Maybe. “Like I said, most of us get on pretty well.”

He let it go. She knew her kind far better than he did -- he knew only her, had known her nature less than a week.

She traced a lazy circle around his navel. “When do you want to leave? We’ve got almost everything we need. We just need to arrange transportation.”

“I’ll leave that to you,” he said. “You know better what we’ll need, what kind of terrain we’ll be dealing with.”

“Not that much better,” she said. “I’m a long way from home.”

“Still.”

“You just don’t want to.” She smacked him lightly.

“My Russian sucks.”

She laughed and agreed. “Да. Это правда.” _Yes. That is true._

**~*~**

The trip northward was arduous, parts of it over roads that were little more than overgrown tracks through the high grasslands. They approached as near as they dared to the base, then scouted on foot.

The base appeared abandoned, and the appearance was mostly true. Only the unrusted locks on a building that looked ramshackle but was actually solid concrete beneath a well-crafted façade of weathered boards gave away the truth.

And even that building was mostly unoccupied, just two guards inside, stationed in front of a stout door.

The guards never stood a chance. Tasha took them out before they could draw their weapons, the effort not even enough to make her breathe hard.

“They were too complacent,” she said. “ _Bog_ knows how long it’s been since anything happened here. They got lazy.” She spoke as she patted the guards down. The only keys she turned up didn’t fit the door, so she picked the lock. Steve stood watch, feeling relatively useless.

The door came open, and Natasha was through it, exchanging lockpicks for her gun in an eyeblink. But the room was empty save for an aged cryotank and the bank of computers that maintained it.

Steve could barely breathe. Behind the frosty glass, Bucky’s face was clearly visible.

Between them, they triggered the thawing protocol. It took took long -- they were on borrowed time. No telling when the guards’ relief would arrive. Natasha staked out a spot, out of sight but with a good view of the outer room, and waited. Steve paced.

But at last the electronics beeped softly, and the cryotank opened. Bucky blinked up at them, confused.

“Солдат,” Natasha said. _Soldier._

Bucky flinched. “Нет.” _No._

“It’s okay, Bucky,” Steve said quietly. “We’re here to take you home.”


End file.
